Feb. 17, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
08:45
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| So... | |
| I was arguing with the guy who said the number two exists. | |
| Oh, like in a platonic sense? | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| I'm a senior engineer. | |
| I have zero patience and my boss has no issue with that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And here's the other thing too. | |
| So, engineers, I mean, I was not obviously an official engineer, but I was a chief technical officer and lead researcher in a software company, and I got very impatient with people, because I just, I knew what I wanted, I knew what I wanted to do, I knew where I wanted to bring things, and I knew how I could make things happen, so I just made them happen, and I got very impatient with people, especially because I've been programming since the age of 11, right? | |
| So, you know, this is almost 20 years' experience, and I just got... | |
| Bored, frustrated, and annoyed with people. | |
| So engineers, yeah, they're going to think that other people are stupid. | |
| And you can have a society where no one gets offended, but then you have a society which is going to collapse. | |
| It's going to fail and collapse and be taken over. | |
| Because, you know, the sort of chest-thumping, you suck, stuff that men do is how we encourage each other to excellence. | |
| And if you want men to not be harsh, that's fine. | |
| But that's kind of like saying, well, I want a military when no one's ever uncomfortable. | |
| And it's like, okay, then you're just going to lose. | |
| Just going to lose. | |
| Just going to lose. | |
| And of course, none of this stuff comes from the free market. | |
| market, it's all government crap, right, as a whole. | |
| Yeah, being offended is really a confession that you're just not in the right space, right? | |
| You are just not in the right space. | |
| Being offended is, I don't have anything to contribute, so I'm just going to get upset. | |
| Okay, that's fine. | |
| I mean, listen, if I was at some physics conference, other than maybe some abstract topics on the philosophy of science, I couldn't add anything at all of value, just be in the way, because I'm not trained in physics and I'm not very good at math, right? | |
| So I just wouldn't have anything in particular to add. | |
| So when you don't have anything of value to add, sometimes it's a real challenge to shut your pie hole and stop talking, right? | |
| All right, let's see here. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Billy Joel is quite the martinet, which is the stage show, big reputation. | |
| Oh yeah, I've seen him trashing things and all that, but he's a consummate showman and a very hardworking musician, right? | |
| Inventors are inventors because normal is irritating to them. | |
| Yeah, for sure. | |
| Senior engineer here as well. | |
| I get really frustrated with most co-workers. | |
| Yes. | |
| Yes. | |
| If you're, like, people do not understand the incoherent rage seething beneath the surface of anybody who's really good at stuff. | |
| There's a great line in Friends where Joey is trying to reason his way through something and Chandra is like, get there faster! | |
| And that's life. | |
| If you're really good at stuff, and There are other people who, of course, by definition, aren't really good at stuff. | |
| The people who aren't really good at stuff have no idea how incredibly frustrating it is. | |
| So, you know, just for references' sake, if you're listening to this and you're not particularly good at stuff and you want to understand the mindset of people who aren't good at stuff, just try being at half speed for... | |
| A decade or two. | |
| Then you'll get what it's like for competent people to talk to you. | |
| I'm already giving myself hives. | |
| Doing that. | |
| But that's what it's like. | |
| And it actually is even worse than that. | |
| Like, really good engineers are 10, 50, 100 or 1,000 times more productive than average engineers. | |
| So just think of having to go through life in slow motion and how insane that would make you feel. | |
| Well, that's what it's like being really competent and dealing with average people. | |
| No hate or anything. | |
| I'm just, it's not their fault. | |
| It's just, that's the way that it is. | |
| It absolutely drives you mad. | |
| And they won't understand it. | |
| Well, maybe if they're around even less intelligent people, they'll understand it, but it's really hard for people to understand what it's like for really intelligent, productive, and competent people to be in the workforce as a whole. | |
| And for engineers, it's tough because often they'll lack some kind of social skills, so they won't be the CEO, they won't be the boss, and yet everyone around them tells them what their job is and doesn't understand. | |
| I mean... | |
| If you ever want to hear incoherent bubbling rage under the surface, have marketing and HR talk to an engineer and tell them what needs to be done. | |
| I've been on the receiving end of that. | |
| I really have. | |
| Like, for years, I was on the receiving end of that. | |
| I got a whole novel about this where I draw from bits of experience called The God of Atheists, and it's brutal. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| You know, just. | |
| Just is the word. | |
| Why don't you just do this? | |
| Right? | |
| Why don't you just get the.NET framework to talk to the Java substructure? | |
| Oh, just have them talk. | |
| Have them chat. | |
| You know, put them in a hot tub. | |
| Put on some Barry White or some Sade. | |
| You know, just have them chat. | |
| Just have them do this, right? | |
| So then I would say to the marketing and salespeople, I'd say, well, why don't you sell the software without lying about it? | |
| Just don't lie. | |
| Just don't. | |
| Tell the client the software can do stuff that it can't do. | |
| Don't talk about these magical integrations that we have with systems we've never even heard of. | |
| My God, I remember having to write an interface to a FoxPro database, which hadn't been used since the early days of the Mac. | |
| It's madness. | |
| Or you'd say to the board, why don't you just have the software do this? | |
| And I'd be, well, why don't you just double your income without increasing your cost? | |
| Just do that, and we'll have tons of money for all this stuff. | |
| Like, well, it's not that simple. | |
| And it's like, yes, that's true. | |
| I think you're starting to get where I'm coming from. | |
| Because everything is magical and easy to people who don't understand a fucking thing. | |
| Everything is just magical and easy to people who don't understand a fucking thing. | |
| And you have to deal with a lot of those people in the business world. | |
| My husband can be so frustrated with his retired co-workers. | |
| LOL. He's the best at what he does. | |
| And it's the reason why the company is still standing. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And you get this resentment, right? | |
| It's like you as the titan of engineering is holding up the entire company and then people are just mad at you. | |
| Like, why don't you let me hold stuff up? | |
| It's because you're two inches tall and you can't hold up a goddamn thing. | |
| When people get resentful at you, you know, for maybe getting more attention or maybe getting more income or whatever it is, people get resentful at you. | |
| And it's like, but without me, you don't even have a job. | |
| Crazy. | |
| Uh, I don't know who Shannon Sharp is. | |
| Steph, my brain hurting. | |
| Stop, it's torture. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| It's live, so can't 2X this. | |
| Yes, that's right. | |
| Honestly, if I could do a whole show like that, you understand it would drive you. | |
| But this is me dealing with most people in the world. | |
| And I'm not mad at them. | |
| It's just a frustrating situation. | |
| God knows I wouldn't want to be them. |
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